Come on by this Halloween!

jkoolpe

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 21, 2005
Messages
2,565
Reaction score
766
Location
San Bruno, California
As I do every year, I will again by opening up the garage/arcade on Halloween night to any and all who would like to stop by for a spell and play some classic arcade games (and some pinball, too).

All 30 vids and 2 pins are working at the moment (hope it stays that way :) ), and I even picked up a new one not too long ago (a Donkey Kong, Jr.). Installed the Remix version and I must say "Great Job!" to the folks who created the new levels!

Anyway, if you're local and want to stop by, I'll open up around 6:30PM or so and stay open until about 9:30-10ish). No quarters need of course!

Shoot me a PM for the address.

Shots from last year:


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


Cheers,

Jonathan
 
It's funny...I just went through a lot of the photos I've taken for the years I have been doing this (going back to 2007), and in none was anyone playing SD :( .

Hey, I like the game...it's quite fun for 2 people, and playing the linked ships with 1 player is also pretty cool...the best mode for 1 player, IMHO.

I'll have to "force" some folks to play it this year so I can get a picture of it :D .

Jon
 
And a good time was had by all:

picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


picture.php


Even had some folks who played Space Duel this year!

And the best part...only one minor issue with Food Fight (sound got funky and game reset a couple of times) that turned out to be a problem with the A/R board...just a couple of burned resistors that I replaced in about 5 minutes after everyone went home. Probably a left over "injury" from before I repaired the game's edge connector a couple of years back...

Hope all my fellow KLOV'rs who did the arcade thing for Halloween had fun, too.

Jon
 
And a good time was had by all:

And the best part...only one minor issue with Food Fight (sound got funky and game reset a couple of times) that turned out to be a problem with the A/R board...just a couple of burned resistors that I replaced in about 5 minutes after everyone went home. Probably a left over "injury" from before I repaired the game's edge connector a couple of years back...

Hope all my fellow KLOV'rs who did the arcade thing for Halloween had fun, too.

Jon


Haha. Finally the SD gets some love.

If the AR resistors were R29 and/or R30, that does imply that your +5V and/or GND connections are resistive and/or broken to some degree, somewhere between the AR and the game board. It's common for one of them to burn when the respective connection goes open, usually at the edge connector pin, when the pins lose their spring and fail to make contact (as the AR tries to shove several amps of current backwards through the 10-ohm sense resistors, as that's the only other path to the board).

However both of them burning is uncommon, and suggests you may have some other issue. You might want to look into that, as you don't want to mess around with things that can cause fires.

When there's an open connection, the resistors flash up and go poof quickly, shutting down the AR. But when the edge connection is poor and goes resistive, the resistors gradually get very hot over time, and burn the PCB, sometimes to the point of charring a hole right through them (which I see regularly on AR's that I refurbish).

Maybe the edge connector parts you used were somehow an issue, but as someone who repairs many of these, something doesn't smell right about that (no pun intended), and you might want to look into that further. The only Inferno you want in that house is the Williams kind. ;)
 
Thanks for the advice.

I'll keep an eye on these 2 resistors for sure. I replaced both R29 and R30 with 1/2 watt ones (vs. the 1/4 watts that I think were original). I have rebuilt the A/R board and also replaced Big Blue (about 10 years ago).

As I said, I *think* both resistors being charred was leftover from before I had repaired this edge connector a couple of years back. Before I did so, the ground and +5V pins were definitely an issue as they they had been bypassed by a previous owner (+5v and ground wires to the edge connector were cut and then soldered directly to the board). These pins on the board were also pretty charred/browned (as is common on a lot of Atari boards of the time of course).

About 2 years ago, I redid all of this and replaced the split molex pins (for the +5V and for the grounds) in the edge connector housing itself and rewired the +5V and ground wires back into the connector. Also added a finger board and did a repair to the edge connector/board itself as detailed on Bob Robert's site here:

http://therealbobroberts.net/pace.html

It's not pretty, but the connection seems to work well now and the connector does stay mostly cool now (it used to get pretty warm).

I guess as I said...I'll keep an eye on it for sure, but hopefully it will be OK now.

Jon
 
Thanks for the advice.

I'll keep an eye on these 2 resistors for sure. I replaced both R29 and R30 with 1/2 watt ones (vs. the 1/4 watts that I think were original). I have rebuilt the A/R board and also replaced Big Blue (about 10 years ago).

As I said, I *think* both resistors being charred was leftover from before I had repaired this edge connector a couple of years back. Before I did so, the ground and +5V pins were definitely an issue as they they had been bypassed by a previous owner (+5v and ground wires to the edge connector were cut and then soldered directly to the board). These pins on the board were also pretty charred/browned (as is common on a lot of Atari boards of the time of course).

About 2 years ago, I redid all of this and replaced the split molex pins (for the +5V and for the grounds) in the edge connector housing itself and rewired the +5V and ground wires back into the connector. Also added a finger board and did a repair to the edge connector/board itself as detailed on Bob Robert's site here:

http://therealbobroberts.net/pace.html

It's not pretty, but the connection seems to work well now and the connector does stay mostly cool now (it used to get pretty warm).

I guess as I said...I'll keep an eye on it for sure, but hopefully it will be OK now.

Jon


You definitely don't want to use 1/2 watts there.

They're 1/4 watt for a reason, as you want them to open up if there's an issue. Replacing them with 1/2 watt just means bigger fireballs (and a bigger hole burned in the PCB) if there's a problem, as they're going to have as much as 15-20W pumped through them (5V at 3-4A) if one of the connections opens between the AR and game board.

The 1/4 watt resistors act like fuses, and replacing them with larger ones increases fire risk, as they're going to get a lot hotter before they go open.
 
(Was going to be an edit, but just to make sure you don't miss it.)

To clarify, the sense path (which the 10 ohm resistors are a part of) is normally a high-impedance path with very low current, which allows the +5V regulator on the AR to 'see' what the delivered voltage is on the game board. The low current is why the resistors are 1/4 watt, as there normally should be little to no current on the sense path.

When the primary high-current 5V and GND paths to/from the AR are interrupted, the AR forces current backwards through the sense resistors, as they do provide an additional path to the board, and the current will take the path of least resistance.

If the 1/4 watt resistors are burning up, there is something wrong, and you will be covering the symptom up by replacing them with 1/2 watt, when what you really want to do is figure out what it is about the primary path that is causing high resistance.

Anyway, sorry for hijacking your thread. You just don't want to mess around when it comes to fire safety stuff, and of the 5 or so ways I know of that are real arcade fire safety issues, this is one of them.
 
Last edited:
OK then...I'll replace the 1/2 watts with 1/4 watts before I turn the game back on...shouldn't be a problem...I should have some around in my parts arsenal.

FYI, the 1/2 watt ones were leftovers from one of Bob Roberts old A/R board repair kits that I had laying around.

Again, hopefully the repairs I had done previously as I described will fix the overall problem.

Jon
 
OK then...I'll replace the 1/2 watts with 1/4 watts before I turn the game back on...shouldn't be a problem...I should have some around in my parts arsenal.

FYI, the 1/2 watt ones were leftovers from one of Bob Roberts old A/R board repair kits that I had laying around.

Again, hopefully the repairs I had done previously as I described will fix the overall problem.

Jon


Yes, people often hail BR as all-knowing arcade guru. And while much of his info was great, and very useful, there are a few examples where his parts and subs were not correct. This is one of them.

His caps were also the lowest quality possible. (Google Xicon and Lelon cap quality, if interested.) I get many ARs and 6100/G05/v2000 boards in for repair with BR kits, where either the kit didn't solve the root cause, and/or the parts in the kit failed, and/or in some cases the parts were counterfeit and just bad. Unfortunately there are multiple documented cases of this.

And mind you I'm not here to hate on Bob, as I fully acknowledge he did a lot of good for the community, and I bought many parts from him myself, back when I was starting out in this hobby. But the reality is he also helped distribute a fair number of bad parts, which I now see fairly regularly, doing repairs for folks here. And I'm just providing a PSA here to save people some trouble, and money.

I strongly recommend people who have BR kits discard them, and get new ones from one of the newer sellers (e.g., Ian or security0001). They aren't worth the risk, and the newer kits have much better parts, which will last much longer.

Ok no really, I'm really done soapboxing now. ;)
 
whoa, whoa, pal ... you're going to awake the BR zealots

1507687692347.jpg


Yes, people often hail BR as all-knowing arcade guru. And while much of his info was great, and very useful, there are a few examples where his parts and subs were not correct. This is one of them.

His caps were also the lowest quality possible. (Google Xicon and Lelon cap quality, if interested.) I get many ARs and 6100/G05/v2000 boards in for repair with BR kits, where either the kit didn't solve the root cause, and/or the parts in the kit failed, and/or in some cases the parts were counterfeit and just bad. Unfortunately there are multiple documented cases of this.

And mind you I'm not here to hate on Bob, as I fully acknowledge he did a lot of good for the community, and I bought many parts from him myself, back when I was starting out in this hobby. But the reality is he also helped distribute a fair number of bad parts, which I now see fairly regularly, doing repairs for folks here. And I'm just providing a PSA here to save people some trouble, and money.

I strongly recommend people who have BR kits discard them, and get new ones from one of the newer sellers (e.g., Ian or security0001). They aren't worth the risk, and the newer kits have much better parts, which will last much longer.

Ok no really, I'm really done soapboxing now. ;)
 
Back
Top Bottom